I’ve been working with wood since I was six years old, when my father showed me how to use a hammer and a saw. I took woodshop courses in high school and built some useless ugly stuff there. When I graduated from high school I was accepted to a music school for classical guitar, so I hired a local luthier to make me a nice instrument during the summer break. He took so long to do anything on it (after he took my money) that I used to pester him to teach me how to do each step. At the end of the summer I had built my own guitar, and when he asked if I wanted to apprentice to him, I got my deposit back from the school and learned to build and repair acoustic guitars for three years.
At the end of my apprenticeship I moved to California and built guitars for several companies over the next 10 years, including Alembic, Turner Guitars and Modulus Graphite. I learned how to do inlay work at the Alembic Company after I drilled holes through two expensive basses. My boss, Rick Turner showed me the basics of inlay, and I’ve been fascinated by it ever since.
In 1985 I decided to become self employed doing only inlay work, and have only been doing that ever since. I wrote a book in 1994, called The Art of Inlay , which has been recently reissued in a revised and expanded edition. I managed to film and market three instructional videos after the book release, and have lately redone them as DVDs. In 2002 the Martin Guitar Company asked me to design inlays for their 1,000,000th guitar, and at the end of 2003 I finally completed it, much to my relief and surprise.
I’m still just as interested in inlaying as I was back in 1975, and strive to make each one better than the last.
I have been published in Guitar Player, Fine Woodworking, American Woodworker, The Harp Journal, Acoustic Guitar Magazine, The Robb Report, Fretboard Journal, Paspaley Pearls magazine, and various Japanese magazines. Books include Martin Guitar Masterpieces, Pearls, The Fender Custom Shop, and The Acoustic Guitar.
To see more examples of Larry’s work, visit robinsoninlays.com.